‘It’s troublesome for kids to keep away from the temptation of screens’: Soumayan Biswas’s greatest telephone image | Pictures

In the Hooghly district of West Bengal, only a quick stroll from his residence, photographer Soumayan Biswas discovered himself circling the perimeters of a massive village pond, looking – as he typically does – for “stories”. He remembers that the climate was “cloudy that day, and the wind was light”. It was the sort of muted afternoon when your consideration is sharpened.

The story appeared within the type of Sabana, a 12-year-old scholar mendacity beside a tangle of fishing nets. Biswas had by no means met her earlier than and, whereas spending a while round her, was struck by how absorbed she was in her telephone.

The mask-like pose was Sabana’s concept. “I don’t know the origin of the eyes image; whether it was something she had created herself, downloaded or found online,” Biswas says, including that he was extra all in favour of the way it labored to create “a visual relationship between the child and the digital screen”. One of Sabana’s arms is painted with nail polish, the opposite naked – a small asymmetry that mirrors the duality of the bodily world and the one wherein she’s immersed.

Although Biswas stresses that the {photograph} will not be an announcement about Sabana personally being “addicted” to her telephone, he says: “Knowingly or otherwise, mobile phones have created a different world in the lives of children – it is very difficult for them to avoid that temptation.”